Display systems are limited in their ability to produce life-like images by their inherent contrast, which is the ratio of intensity of the highest luminance parts of a scene and the lowest luminance parts of the scene. Over the past decade, display industries have steadily improved the contrast of display systems, such as display systems employing liquid-crystal cells, liquid-crystal-on silicon, plasma cells, and micromirror based tight valves. Today many display systems using light valves have achieved a dynamic range of around 2000:1. However, this achieved contrast is still far below human visual capabilities or the dynamic range of natural scenes, which is typically around 50,000:1 or even higher. Conventionally, sharpness enhancement filters have been employed to improve perceived contrast, but these filters are costly and/or inherent noise amplification.
Therefore, it is desired to have a method for enhancing the contrast of display systems while minimizing noise amplification.